Save Simba, the stray kitten from Albania

Hi, my name is Tanya, I have two little children and a cat, and I would like to tell you a story about our recent trip to Albania. We went to explore Albania as part of our home education program about Balkan countries in October and stayed in rental apartment in Durres. We have learned a lot about Albania, but there is one thing which has shocked us the most - the horrendous situation with stray animals, who are literally everywhere - on the beach, on the streets, near the shops and restaurants, they are so thin and malnourished, many with horrible injuries, like broken limbs, missing eyes or torn ears, covered in fleas, etc. We have not been prepared to see what we saw, my children were in tears nearly every day seeing these poor animals abandoned on the streets of Durres. Local people had zero interest in feeding or providing water for them, so my children were carrying plastic buckets full of drinking water to the beach throughout our entire stay and we have been feeding local stray dogs with the dog food every time we went for a walk. 4 days before our flight back to UK we found a small stray kitten on the beach, who was hiding from the dogs on the tree. He looked scared and hungry, so we took him back into our rental apartment as he didn't look very well and we just couldn't leave him all alone. On the next day we took him to a local vet and it turned out the kitten had an accute bronchitis and needed an urgent antibiotics treatment. We left him in the clinic and paid for his stay for a week plus medication. We only had 3 days left to find a volunteer, who could help us with boarding - we really fell in love with this little fella and thought that perhaps we could try and find the way to get him out of Albania into the UK. We posted in all expat groups on Facebook asking for help and found a lovely girl, who agreed to look after Simba ( that's what we called him) following his antibiotics treatment and get him vaccinated and ready for international travel. We are now back in UK and Simba has been discharged from the clinic, however he is due back again for his rabbies vaccination next week. He will then need to wait at least 21 days before the blood test can be done for titres and before he can travel. In the meantime, we decided to set up a fundraising page for Simba, as we will need to cover the bill for vaccinations, the cost of the documents, his food expenses while he is with a volunteer and the actual travel cost, as Albania is not in the EU and he will need to travel across all Europe to get to England. I am a single parent and we already have a young cat at home, who we bought a year ago from an irresponsible owner. The kitten was also ill and required antibiotics, having had a massive swelling on the jaw. Matilda is now a healthy gorgeous looking cat and will be a great friend for Simba. My kids are currently trying to sell all their unwanted toys and things in order to raise some money towards the travelling expenses for Simba, so every pound you could possibly donate would bring us a step closer to welcome Simba in our home.

An estimate to get him out of Albania into the UK is between £700-1200 - it's an eye watering amount, compared to £150.00 we spent to buy our cat Matilda a year ago, but we believe that miracles can happen - at the end of a day, how much is one's life worth? To us it's priceless, so we are prepared to go above and beyond to get him out from there, he became part of our family as soon as we got him off that tree.

Please help to save him, he will not survive being homeless again, he is the most affectionate kitten ever, who just loves humans, he purrs all the time - he deserves to be given a chance for a better life!